I sometimes look back at my old reviews and wonder, "What was I thinking?" Of course, each review is an honest reflection of how I felt about that particular game at the time, so it does capture a legit moment. It's like with music. Some albums I wasn't really into when I first heard them, but listening to them weeks, months, even years later I think, "Wow! This is brilliant!" The opposite holds true too; there are some albums I loved immediately but don't listen to so much any more.

I sometimes look back at my old reviews and wonder, "What was I thinking?" Of course, each review is an honest reflection of how I felt about that particular game at the time, so it does capture a legit moment. It's like with music. Some albums I wasn't really into when I first heard them, but listening to them weeks, months, even years later I think, "Wow! This is brilliant!" The opposite holds true too; there are some albums I loved immediately but don't listen to so much any more.

I concur. I look back at a few games and think "I scored that too high." But as my colleague said, you call 'em like you see 'em at the time. It's tough to know if you're now thinking something should have a different score because of other games you've played since, because you've forgotten some of what you liked/hated about the game, etc. Which is why we don't go back and actually change the scores. :) (I'd rather not give actual examples for the same reason.)

I was tellling the team just the other day that I also read some of my old reviews and think "Oh, geez. This isn't very good writing. Good thing I'm better than that now." Then I tell that voice in my head who says I'm not better to shut up, because he's mean. ;)

I really hope Tri-Ace will bring us a new Valkyrie Profile this gen! VP2 had amazing graphics in the late years of the PS2 and if that tech demo is anything to be based upon, whatever they are working on should look (graphics) pretty nice.

Back to quoting past reviews and still on the Tri-Ace boat:

Quote

Luckily, that's about the only bad aspect of Star Ocean: The Last Hope.

by John McCarroll

(I know taking his sentence out of context isn't the right thing to do, it's just a harmless joke)I do agree with him for the most part, but this game had so much going wrong... Before this sentence he talks about the voice acting, which is bad not only in English but just as bad in Japanese. Also the characters will drive you insane. I can't believe they made a game without one single likeable character. Actually, not even not likeable, I'd say they are all hateable.

It's sad because like John said in his review, there is some good stuff in it, but the bad aspects make it almost unplayable.

Based on my experience with big projects, the developers would say "Do you think we don't know? This isn't the game we wanted to make. It's the compromise and bad design that management pushed us into when they decided that they knew better than us." Then they might say that they understand that sometimes you just have to make a deadline and accept that "done is better than perfect" or they might not. Depends on the person whether they feel that's true or not.

My favorite quotes of "I said THAT?!" are the "hindsight is 20/20" kind.

E3 2005: The version we played at E3 only had 23 out of a total of 100 weapons and one random cityscape, but it was shaping up to be simply brilliant. Combining the hack-and-slash gameplay of the Diablo series with a First-Person Shooter leaves Hellgate: London as being one of the most desirable games of, unfortunately, 2006.

WRONG.

E3 2006: While Hellgate: London doesn't have a set release date, we're sure it's going to crush whatever it goes up against upon its release.

WRONG.

E3 2007: The fact that we can be shown very little new and still salivate to the title shows just how good [Hellgate: London] should be.

Things change. If you ask me, P2 has been vastly outclassed by its sequels and by the rest of the SMT series in terms of playability and design.

And critics too. Neal will probably still swear P2:IS is one of the best RPGs ever made, and I suspect John wouldn't have budged too much if he hypothetically reviewed it when it was contemporary. We had an inverted example there too, the original Twilight Princess review was not as positive as the newer one by Mike.

I also think people's appreciation for things evolves over time. The things I love about certain games now are things I didn't necessarily appreciate when I was younger. It's why I love FF9 more now than I did as a kid. It's the same thing with movies, music, and literature too.

Logged

Friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn't matter, but work is third.